What a viral video from Khurja cannot show us
A short clip from the Ramlila Maidan in Khurja, in Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr district, has been travelling across social media since Thursday night. According to reports on the footage, it shows several women bouncers grabbing a young woman by her hair and hitting her during a Jalpari, or mermaid, show. The incident is said to have taken place around 10 pm on 22 October, and police reached the spot and took the injured woman to Jatia Hospital, where she was admitted. The Khurja Jalpari show incident is already being discussed as though a verdict exists, when what exists so far is a set of allegations and a hospital bed.
Allegations, a Hospital Bed and an Investigation at Its Start
What is established is small. Reports say an argument or confrontation broke out between the woman and the show’s bouncers, but the cause is still unclear, and no account from the woman, the bouncers or the organisers has yet been reported. The SP Dehat has said that Khurja Nagar police have been directed to investigate and take the necessary action. Police are expected to examine the video, record the woman’s statement once she is fit to give one, and question the bouncers and organisers. A clip of a few seconds cannot show what happened before it began, which is why neither condemnation nor defence of anyone involved belongs on the strength of the footage alone.
Who Answers for Private Security at a Public Fair
Shows and melas hire bouncers to keep order, not to settle arguments with fists. Whatever sparked this confrontation, hired security acts on behalf of the organisers, so questions about training, supervision and accountability are fair ones for the show’s management as well as for the individuals seen in the video. This does not change the nature of the act just because the perpetrators are women, and any woman who is beaten by bouncers in Bulandshahr has the right to the same treatment, protection, and recording of complaints. And anyone witnessing something like this can do their bit by securing the footage and calling the emergency number 112.
We get instant judgments on what constitutes our life far more rapidly than any investigation, as viral videos compress the complexity of real life into a speck of outrage. Yet no 10-second dash of grainy filming captured amidst the chaos of a summer's midnight is going to do much to explain the story or the fears in that moment. Justice requires patience, a fuller, more nuanced official statement from the woman involved, and a comprehensive, painstakingly objective review of what evidence we have. Outrage on social media, those broad swaths of hatred, can spread rapidly, but a real person's life deserves time and dignity.
